USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1916-1955 > Part 14
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The city saw the last of regular professional baseball for some time in the summer of 1930 when the local club in the Eastern League collapsed in mid-season, followed by the clubs at Hartford, Providence, and New Haven, leaving only four teams in the league to finish the schedule. Once the pride of Pittsfield, having their home grounds at Wahconah Park, the "Hillies" had won the Eastern League pennant in 1919 and 1921, and down the years had usually been a strong contender.
As hunger increased, men turned in desperation to chopping wood to earn a few dollars, or selling apples on street corners to make a few cents. Some who had always been respectable took up the shady business of bootlegging. A few turned to petty thievery, burglary, and armed holdups. The police blotter in the old lock-up showed a marked increase in crimes and mis- demeanors.
To aid the "considerable number" of unemployed, the city filled in and graded Wahconah Park at a cost of $25,000, giving work to almost 1,300 men in three-day shifts. It appropriated $95,000 to extend the water mains, beginning this project im- mediately even though it was winter with deep frost still in the ground. This was not an economical procedure, but it provided work for the needy and represented a permanent improvement, far more desirable in all respects than paying out money for home relief.
In the winter time, several hundred found work harvesting ice on Pittsfield's ponds and lakes. Snow removal provided temporary jobs from time to time. On one occasion in the win-
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ter of 1930-31, more than 500 men stormed the City Yards on West Housatonic Street after a heavy snow, all demanding shovels so that they might go to work. As there were jobs for less than a hundred, the rest became "disorderly" in insisting on being put to work. The police had to be called to quiet them and send them unwillingly home to more enforced idleness. Yet in certain circles there were loud repetitions of the stale canard that the unemployed were only those who did not want to work.
Appointed by Mayor Barnes in the fall of 1930, with Colonel William H. Eaton as chairman, an Unemployment Commission opened offices on North Street to register the unemployed and help them find work. With the cooperation of the Chamber of Commerce and the Berkshire Morris Plan Bank, the Commis- sion raised $40,000 to establish an unemployment fund, which helped to relieve immediate distress in many families. Within a few months, the Commission registered almost 1,300 unem- ployed. Of these, slightly more than 300 found work, chiefly on odd jobs that lasted only a day or two and paid 50 cents an hour at the most, and usually less.
It was all very well for the Commission to register the un- employed, the president of the City Council pointed out, but the Commission could not create jobs. Only the city could do that, and the authorities felt that it could not afford to do so. Expen- ditures were rising, especially payments for home relief. These rose from $42,000 in 1929 to $182,700 in 1932. At the same time, revenues were falling sharply, with more than $1,000,000 in taxes unpaid. Interest on bonds to finance the new high school building and other improvements took a large bite out of the budget. The city was steadily running deeper into debt.
Consequently, the Public Works department, which normally employed several hundred men, had to cut its regular working force to fifty or less. There was little money for maintenance of existing facilities and essential services, let alone for improve- ments and new projects. Appropriations for the department fell from more than $1,000,000 in 1929 to $377,000 in 1933. Dur- ing the icy winter of 1931-32, the coldest in a decade, there was
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not even money enough to sand the streets and roads, a cause of many accidents. On more than one occasion, groups of citizens snatched up shovels and did what they could to sand the streets themselves.
When the Public Works department did have some work to offer for snow removal and other occasional jobs, a member of the City Council protested that those certified as being in need were passed over in favor of those who came with "slips" from some politician. He had given out some slips himself, he said, but the emergency was now too serious for that. On one occa- sion, money to provide employment and even food orders for the hungry were held up for days as the City Council wrangled about the "legality" of transferring unallocated funds for the purpose.
There was a sad want of cooperation and coordination among the various agencies, public and private, that were dealing with employment and relief. This was not peculiar to Pittsfield, but general throughout the country.
It had long been the accepted view, especially in New Eng- land, that every community should take care of its own. But neither municipal governments nor local agencies were geared to meet social catastrophe. Faced with unprecedented demands and myriads of new complex problems, they floundered, as was to be expected.
They lacked the organization and the trained staff to meet growing imperative needs. They were hampered by want of adequate funds, by want of clear objectives, by want of any basic, coordinated, long-range plan. In a real sense, they operat- ed from day to day, hoping that the clouds would lift tomorrow.
Welfare agencies, public and private, had been largely con- cerned with the sick and unemployable, whom they handled as individual "cases." Now they were faced with millions of able- bodied people who were not "cases" at all in the ordinary sense -men and women whose only need was an opportunity to work and who desperately wanted some assurance that they and their children would not starve meantime. The relief of mass distress did not fit the old social agency patterns, with the result that
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everywhere there was considerable chaos and confusion, misun- derstanding and non-understanding.
In 1931, the Pittsfield Community Chest had the local situa- tion studied by two experts-one representing the Association of Community Chests and Councils; the other, the Family Wel- fare Association of America.
Recommending drastic changes, the experts reported a lack of coordination in handling individual cases, a confusion be- tween handling unemployment cases and those involving standard family welfare work, a want of joint planning by pri- vate agencies, public agencies, and local industries in meeting the community problem.
They pointed to the inadequacy of local municipal relief. Compared with most cities of its size, Pittsfield gave very little, they declared. Its aid per person was much below the average.
Mayor Barnes took exception to the report, dismissing the ex- perts as "theorists." The needy were being adequately cared for, he said, though admitting that the Welfare department had been rather "hard-boiled" under Superintendent A. W. Shaw, who had just resigned.
For its part, the Community Chest adopted many of the policy and organization changes recommended by the experts, to the benefit of its member agencies and their clients.
Administration of relief and better enforcement of prohibi- tion became lively political issues with the approach of the city elections in the fall of 1931. Seeking to be re-elected for his third two-year term, Mayor Jay P. Barnes was challenged in the Democratic primaries by Patrick J. ("P.J.") Moore, a prom- inent lawyer, who had been mayor for two terms almost twenty years before, in 1913 and 1914.
In an unexpected upset, Moore defeated Barnes and went on to win the mayoralty easily. The Democrats also won control of the Board of Aldermen and the Common Council by large majorities. If any believed that this sweeping Democratic victory presaged greater harmony at City Hall, they were much mis- taken.
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"Economy" was the new mayor's dictum, which brought him into conflict with the City Council, the police and other muni- cipal employees, the teachers, the growing number of jobless, and various other groups, public and private.
Under the circumstances, conflict was inevitable, for few saw eye to eye on what was real and what was false economy. Certainly, city finances were in a precarious state. A tenth of Pittsfield's families were on the welfare list. More and more loans had to be made to carry the relief load and meet the week- ly city payroll of $25,000. As the loans piled up and went un- paid, the city found its credit impaired. To borrow money, it was soon compelled to pay 6 per cent interest on short term loans, the highest rate it had ever paid, an unproductive drain on its dwindling revenues .*
Even with these borrowings, municipal employees in Pitts- field, as in so many communities throughout the land, had many "payless" pay days. At one time they went weeks without a check until the city was in debt to them almost $200,000.
When neighboring Lenox found itself in a similar predica- ment, a local newspaperman, an Eagle correspondent, came forward and advanced the town $20,000 to pay its bills. This caused not only a local but a nation-wide sensation, especially among blase' reporters. They had heard of everything, they said, but a working newspaperman having $20,000-and in cash, at that.
Mayor Moore cut the budget $218,660 below the previous year, the largest proportionate cut in Massachusetts, giving Pittsfield the smallest budget for any city of comparable size in the state. The mayor hoped that this drastic cut would, some- how, relieve local unemployment and obviate the necessity of having the city go outside for aid.
The economy drive took many forms. All playground super- visors were discharged, which would have closed the play- grounds if supervisors, largely volunteer, had not been provided by a Citizens' Playground Committee, with Rabbi Harry Kaplan as chairman. The mayor sharply criticized the buying of eye-
*Four years later, it was paying a mere 0.19 per cent interest on short term loans.
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glasses and false teeth for veterans on soldiers' relief. To save $1,000, the traffic lights were turned off for six months, even at such busy and dangerous intersections as North and West streets. It seemed for a time that Pittsfield would be without street lights because its electric bills were so far in arrears.
To save $1,500, the evening schools were closed, which affect- ed twenty-eight teachers, some of whom were added to the un- employed. Expenditures for school books and janitorial staffs were reduced. No new teaching appointments were made. The use of substitute teachers was held to a minimum, with school principals doing the substituting as they found time.
Teachers and all school employees took a 10 per cent salary cut. The kindergartens were abolished, which aroused loud protest. They had been a part of the school system since 1902, when they had finally been accepted after a long and bitter struggle.
"Why the hullabaloo over the kindergartens?" Mayor Moore asked. They were frills costing $18,000 a year. Besides, they were and had always been illegal. The School Committee never had any specific authority to establish them.
The secretary of the Chamber of Commerce joined the fray by quoting the Reverend William R. Kelly, of the Catholic School Board of New York, who declared kindergartens a "modern monstrosity." Besides, said the Chamber's secretary, they were hard on the children's eyes. Many interested in edu- cation put in a spirited reply, but the kindergartens remained closed.
But all of these economies were minor, and Mayor Moore appointed a committee of local bankers to search the city de- partments and make recommendations for improvements. After a closed session, the committee made its first recommendation- that the School Committee not rescind its vote to cut teachers' salaries 25 per cent for the remainder of the year, equal to a 10 per cent cut for the year as a whole. Such a cut, they added, should be applied not to the teachers alone but to the whole school department, from the superintendent down.
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The bankers' committee then recommended a 10 per cent salary cut for all city employees for the remainder of the year.
The bankers made no recommendation about cutting the un- precedentedly high interest rates that the city had to pay on its loans, some from local banks.
Pittsfield banks, it appeared, were doing very well in spite of the depression. Business in 1932 enabled the Agricultural National to pay a dividend of 16 per cent. In only three years of its long history dating back to 1818 had it paid a higher dividend.
A new Unemployment Commission, with R. H. Gamwell as chairman, was appointed in the summer of 1932 as the crisis grew worse. The Wyandotte and other local mills closed down. The old Russell mills, long a landmark, sold their machinery at public auction. Production at the General Electric plant de- clined. There was very little building activity. Hundreds of families were losing their homes through inability to keep up their mortgage payments, or their taxes, or both.
Unemployment in the nation had reached more than 12,000, 000, with an additional 7,000,000 on part-time jobs. For the most part, public works were at a standstill.
Those out of work were getting restive and resentful, holding huge mass meetings in our larger cities. More than 20,000 gath- ered on Boston Common to demand work and, meantime, ade- quate relief. Some 17,000 hungry veterans joined the Bonus March to Washington. With fire and sword, they were driven from the city by the Army at White House orders. Dairy farm- ers were on strike in the Midwest, overturning and burning milk trucks. As in Shays' Rebellion in western Massachusetts a cen- tury and a half before, armed farmers in many sections prevent- ed the courts from sitting so that no more farm mortgages could be foreclosed. More and more banks crashed, ruining their depositors.
As the 1932 presidential election approached, it seemed to many judicious and sober-minded men that America was on the brink of revolution. A number in Pittsfield shared this view,
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anticipating a great "social upheaval" if something were not done to check the drift of events.
As their candidate, the Republicans renominated President Herbert Hoover. He and his party had done little to help the states and municipalities with their relief problems, being strongly opposed to direct Federal aid for the unemployed, pre- ferring to work through voluntary associations "to preserve the principle of individual and local responsibility."
If the Democrats won, said Hoover in concluding his cam- paign, "the grass will grow in the streets of a hundred cities, a thousand towns; the weeds will overrun the fields of millions of farms." Nothing would be left of "the American way of life."
The Democrats nominated Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York. Many dismissed him as an amiable man who would like to be president, little suspecting what he was, or would become.
Some objected to Roosevelt's forthright stand on repeal of the Prohibition Amendment. But there was no reason to suspect any very radical departures in other fields as the candidate fol- lowed the Democratic platform in campaigning for a drastic reduction in all Federal expenditures, a balanced budget, and a sound currency, plus some mild reforms of banking and stock exchange practices.
Almost all could agree on that program. Later, there might have been less surprise if more people had taken note of Roose- velt's consistent appeal to the "forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid," and of his words to the Democratic Convention in accepting his nomination:
"I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the Ameri- can people."
As shown in the primaries, Massachusetts Democrats would have preferred Al Smith as the candidate, instructing the Massa- chusetts delegation to support him.
For the fifth time, and the last to date, the neighboring town of New Ashford was the first to report its complete presidential returns, at 6:28 a.m .- 24 votes for Hoover, 8 for Roosevelt.
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The Berkshire town of Peru was the second to report, at 8:42 a.m .- 37 for Hoover, 23 for Roosevelt.
Roosevelt carried Pittsfield by a narrow margin of 417 votes, and Berkshire County by only 76 votes. But Roosevelt won in forty-two of the states, including Massachusetts, rolling up a total of 472 votes in the electoral college to Hoover's 59.
But instead of getting better, things got rapidly worse during the long four-month interregnum between the election in early November and the inauguration of the new regime in early March-a constitutional fault later corrected by the 20th amendment.
Nervous depositors started a run on the banks, withdrawing or transferring their accounts, so that the whole banking struc- ture threatened to collapse. To stop the panic, state after state declared a "banking holiday"-perhaps good for the banks, but a worry and a pain to depositors, who were denied the use of their own money. They could not withdraw a dime, though the dime was theirs. By inauguration day on March 4, 1933, all banks in the country were on a "holiday," except those in Dela- ware and North Carolina.
As his first act, President Roosevelt made the bank holiday nation-wide. It was to last at least four days. To keep business running meantime, clearing houses and similar institutions were authorized to issue bank-guaranteed scrip. The Berkshire County Clearing House issued $8,000,000 of such scrip to tide people over till normal transactions were resumed.
Most of the banks in the Berkshires opened on March 15, with withdrawals limited to $100, a restriction soon lifted. Of the banks in Pittsfield, all opened on March 15, except the Berkshire Trust Company.
Having many of its assets "frozen" in the form of local real estate loans, the Berkshire Trust was in process of thorough re- organization. All of its former directors resigned or retired. Cummings C. Chesney, head of the local General Electric plant, succeeded Judge Charles L. Hibbard as president; $125,000 of new capital was subscribed. The bank reopened under restric- tions on March 20. A police officer was on hand, but he "had
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nothing to do." Six months later, the Berkshire Trust was freed of all restrictions and resumed normal business.
Meantime, in a still unsolved mystery, one of the city's lead- ing citizens disappeared-78-year-old William L. Adam, presi- dent of the Berkshire County Savings Bank, a director of the Agricultural National Bank, and a trustee in the Berkshire Trust Company reorganization. On the evening of April 9, 1933, a Sunday, having attended church earlier in the day as was his custom, Adam apparently walked out of his house on West Housatonic Street, and was never seen again. Nor was any trace ever found of him, or his remains. He simply van- ished, and no theory ever offered a reasonable conjecture about his fate.
After the bank holiday, new developments came thick and fast. President Roosevelt called a special session of the Con- gress, which, in the hectic session known as the "Hundred Days," passed a great body of legislation dealing with the banks, industry, agriculture, labor, and unemployment relief. One of the first bills, designed to secure additional revenue, amended the Volstead Act to legalize beer and wine up to 3.2 per cent alcoholic content. All regulatory and control measures were left to the states.
Pittsfield welcomed this. With the city strongly supporting the move, Massachusetts had repealed by a tremendous majority its own prohibition enforcement laws in 1930, leaving enforce- ment entirely to the Federal government. Almost twenty states had taken similar action. As soon as the new Beer-Wine Rev- enue Act was signed, more than 800 Pittsfieldians put in hur- ried orders to the Mohawk Beverage Company to obtain some of the first supply of beer. This became available on April 10, 1933, when the Licensing Board granted fifteen temporary licenses for the sale of beer and wine.
In June, Massachusetts became the eleventh state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, which provided for the repeal of the 18th (prohibition) Amendment.
Pittsfield went "wringing wet" in voting 4 to 1 for repeal. Of the Berkshire towns, only Monterey and Florida voted
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against repeal. Ratification of the 21st Amendment was soon completed and on December 7, 1933, legal hard liquor went on sale at noon, in the Wendell Hotel, but only to patrons of the dining room, which was "more than full," as were some of the guests. Local package stores reported a "brisk" sale of whisky, gin, and wine.
But the return of John Barleycorn, however welcome to some, did not dispel the general gloom throughout the land as the economic machine remained stalled. It obviously needed repairs and a good push to get it running again.
Over the vehement protests of some who felt that they "owned" the country and alone should say how its business should be run, a number of new "radical" measures for Federal action came from Capitol Hill and the White House.
These included closer supervision of the banks and the stock exchanges, stricter accountability in their use of other people's money, insurance of bank deposits, abandonment of the gold standard as a currency base, farm relief, easier farm credits, re- financing of home mortgage debts, a national employment serv- ice, reforestation and related work on public lands by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), private construction of public buildings and other improvements by state and local gov- ernments with the financial aid of the Public Works Adminis- tration (PWA), locally-sponsored work projects to employ the able-bodied on the welfare lists with funds largely supplied by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), which later evolved into the Works Progress Administration (the much-maligned WPA).
Many of these measures suffered, of necessity, from being hastily improvised to meet the urgencies of an unparalleled crisis. But whatever their defects, they brought a gleam of hope to millions who for years had seen nothing but a blank wall ahead of them and a pauper's grave in the distance. The admin- istration might be wise or unwise in its policies. At least, it promised action, a welcome and wholesome change from the hoary myth that economic "laws" were immutable, even if they
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produced social catastrophe, and that there was nothing to do but let nature take its course.
That more mistakes were not made is a tribute less to the administration than to the American people-to their good sense, warm sympathy, spirit of cooperation, organizing ability, and relentless energy.
Opening new avenues, the relief and recovery programs made themselves felt almost immediately in Pittsfield. As its first project under Federal auspices, the city began recruiting its quota for the Civilian Conservation Corps. Reforestation, flood control, prevention of soil erosion, building of roads and trails, and removal of fire hazards from the woods were its chief duties. Single young men aged 18 to 25 were eligible. For their work, they were housed, fed, clothed, and paid $30 a month, part of which was paid directly to their families if they had any.
The city sent off its first CCC recruits in May 1933, when twenty-five young men marched to the station, without brass bands or other fanfare, to entrain for Camp Devens for induc- tion and preliminary training there under Army officers. As part of the Corps' 127th Company, the city's contingent was soon assigned to building a CCC camp in the Pittsfield State Forest, near Lulu Cascade.
Eight CCC camps were established in the Berkshires within a few months. All of them undertook valuable projects still in use-building roads, bridle paths, hiking trails, ski trails, and ski racing slopes; clearing brush and dead wood; carving out of the forests many public camping sites and picnic areas with open fireplaces, benches, and tables. The local men at the Lulu Cascade camp built a road to beautiful Berry Pond in Hancock, the highest lake in the state, making it readily accessible as it had not been before.
At the same time, Pittsfield employed men on the relief rolls to continue its own project of reforesting the slopes of its water- shed. From the start of this project in 1916, it had planted more than a million trees at the almost negligible cost of $23 a thousand, a small price to pay for improving the always worri- some water supply.
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